gems, archaeology, archaeogemology, Black Sea, Sarmatian

Late Hellenistic brooches with polychrome stone or glass inlays, decorated with filigree and granulation and originating from the burials of the Taman Peninsula and Kuban Basin, first attracted the attention of M. Rostovtzeff, who stated that brooches of the same type were in use in the Kuban Basin, Kerch, and the Caucasus up to the 3rd century AD. He mentioned that he was not aware of finds of similar brooches in the Roman world; to him, only the brooches from Antarados in Syria seemed similar, and he also found a similarity between the Kuban brooches and those represented on 2nd-century busts from Palmyra. K.F. Smirnov stressed that the habit of using large circular and oval gold fibulae was spread by the population of the Kuban Basin from the 2nd–1st centuries BC, with construction depending on use: either a needle or double needle on hinges, or a loop on the rear (when used as belt plaques). When fibulae are found in situ, they occur either on the chest or in the area of the girdle of the deceased. Smirnov suggested that Kuban fibulae derived from monochrome Greek medallions with delicate filigree decoration, known in the Bosporan Kingdom in the 4th century BC; in the 3rd century BC there appeared gold fibulae and buttons with filigree decorations and additional decoration in the style of early polychromy. A.K. Ambroz subdivided the fibulae into two groups, with “floral” and with geometric patterns, including in the first the fibulae from the Zelenskoi (Pl. I, 1–2), Artyukhov, and Severskii (Pl. I, 4) barrows, and in the second those from Akhtanizovskaya (Pl. III, 5–7), Geimanovskaya (Pl. III, 13), and Vozdvizhenskaya (Pl. II, 8), and following Rostovtzeff and Smirnov, he maintained their manufacture by Bosporan craftsmen for the Sindo-Maiotian and Sarmatian aristocracy, suggesting Greek prototypes for those fibulae with springs.